Covaris Appoints Annemarie Watson as Chief Executive Officer

WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Covaris, LLC (“Covaris” or “the Company”), a manufacturer of advanced tools enabling life science innovations, announced today that it has appointed Annemarie Watson as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Ms. Watson succeeds Covaris founder Jim Laugharn, who will remain an investor in Covaris and on serve on the Company’s Board of Directors, as well as assuming the role of Chief Technology Officer. Annemarie brings to Covaris a wealth of leadership experience in life sciences and other technology-intensive industries, and a passion for leading innovation and growth.

Most recently, Ms. Watson served as Senior Vice President of Clinical Diagnostics for Eurofins Scientific, where she was responsible for the North American Clinical Diagnostics segment with 1,500 employees across 21 laboratories serving 10 businesses. Previously, she was President of Crane Currency, the global leader in anti-counterfeiting technology solutions. Prior to her time at Crane Currency, Annemarie served as Vice President Business Process Improvement and Global Supply Chain at MDS Inc. (now Nordion), where she served businesses such as radiopharmaceuticals, pharma services and mass spectrometry. She has also held leadership roles at Honda of Canada Manufacturing, and the Boston Consulting Group.

“We are thrilled to welcome Annemarie and believe that her broad leadership experience in life sciences and technology-intensive industries will be instrumental in our success through our next phase of growth,” said Christopher O’Connell, Executive Chairman of the Covaris Board of Directors and Senior Advisor at New Mountain Capital. “We look forward to working with Annemarie as we leverage Covaris’ leading biomolecule extraction technology to accelerate life sciences innovation.”

“I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to lead Covaris, a leader in the life sciences industry with a strong culture of innovation,” said Annemarie Watson, Chief Executive Officer of Covaris. “I have been incredibly impressed with Covaris’ market-leading technology and look forward to working with our team and our partners at New Mountain Capital to expand our capabilities, help bring our technology to more customers, and continue to cement our place as the preeminent sample prep platform for multiple discovery and analytical workflows.”

Mr. O’Connell continued: “I also want to thank Jim Laugharn for his immense contributions to laboratory science. His leadership and vision since Covaris’ inception has positively impacted countless lives. We look forward to continuing to work with Jim in his role as CTO and a member of the Covaris Board of Directors.”

Ms. Watson holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering and Mathematics from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

About Covaris

Based in Woburn, MA, Covaris develops, manufactures, and markets instruments, consumables, and reagents used in pre-analytical sample preparation for genomic and proteomic analysis to help accelerate the pace of research and life science innovations. Using proprietary technologies including focused acoustic energy, Covaris’ tools achieve highly accurate and reproducible results with the goal of empowering customers to make new discoveries, develop new assays and improve bioanalytical results. Some of the non-contact applications include faster automated DNA fragmentation, cell lysis, accelerated binding partner mixing, bead resuspension, and compound formulation.

Additional information about Covaris, LLC is available at www.covaris.com.

About New Mountain Capital

New Mountain Capital is a New York-based investment firm that emphasizes business building and growth, rather than debt, as it pursues long-term capital appreciation. The firm currently manages private equity, credit, net lease real estate and public equity funds with over $37 billion in assets under management. New Mountain seeks out what it believes to be the highest quality growth leaders in carefully selected industry sectors and then works intensively with management to build the value of these companies.

Additional information about New Mountain Capital is available at www.newmountaincapital.com.